At 09:17 AM 28/12/00 -0800, Hal wrote:
>Right, I think the key to understanding the movie is that the "valids"
>are not actually intellectually superior. It is purely a social
>prejudice
This reading, probably supported by the script, alas, rather vitiates any
non-allegorical merit the movie might have had. It's as if the Alphas and
Deltas in BRAVE NEW WORLD really *weren't* drastically different, just
viciously labelled. That does happen in our world, of course, but the point
about sf is that we can dramatize worlds in which GM speciates humanity *in
fact*; as in, e.g., Frank Herbert's rather flawed but still interesting THE
EYES OF HEISENBERG.
Anyone interesting in testing such interpretations against the script can
find it at
http://www.screentalk.org/galleryG.htm#Gattaca
(I haven't yet had time to read it through. But here's a bit about the
stigmatized `invalids' or `genojunk':
`They are the "healthy ill". They don't actually have anything yet - they
may never. But since few of the pre-conditions can be cured or reversed, it
is easier to treat them as if they were already sick.'
On the other hand, Vincent's Genetic Quotient shows that he has a
`congenital heart condition' that had a 0.8 probability of killing him by
now. My impression is that such a disorder is a ticking time bomb; it's not
like an on/off switch where he might have had the good luck to fall into
the 20 percent who could suffer no ill effects at all.)
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:43 MDT